Against Home Rule (1912) eBook

for England. In outlining the problems, the supreme
necessity is the abolition of the present workhouse
system. The Vice-Regal Commission and the Royal
Commission on the Poor Laws are in agreement as to
the guiding principles of reform. They recommend
classification by institutions of all the present
inmates of the workhouses; the sick in the hospital,
the aged and infirm in alms-houses; the mentally defective
in asylums. They suggest the bringing together
into one institution of all the inmates of one class
from a number of neighbouring workhouses. The
sick should be sent to existing Poor Law or County
hospitals, strengthened by the addition of cottage
hospitals in certain districts, while children must
be boarded out. The able-bodied paupers, if well
conducted, might be placed in labour colonies; if
ill conducted, in detention colonies. If these
are established, they must be controlled by the State
and not by County authorities. Of course, the
resources of the existing Unions are much too limited
to undertake such sweeping reforms, and the county
must be substituted for the Union as the area of charge.
The establishment of the Public Assistance authority
will relieve us from the greatest scandal which now
mars the administration of the Poor Law reform in
Ireland—­the corrupt appointment of officers
in the Poor Law medical service. If we cannot
have a State medical service, we can at all events
ensure that appointments under the Poor Law shall be
placed in incorruptible hands.

It is not to be assumed that this short sketch of
policy is exhaustive, or that it touches even in outline
upon all that the Unionist Party might fairly hope
to do in Ireland. It is designed to show only
that financially and politically, every step which
can be taken to relieve the poverty and oppression
which has too long continued in Ireland must be taken
by a Unionist Parliament and a Government pledged to
secure the administration of law and order in Ireland.

I desire on behalf of the Committee under whose auspices
this work has been prepared to thank Mr. S. Rosenbaum
for the ability and zeal he has shown in editing the
book and in preparing it for publication. I wish
also to acknowledge my personal debt to Mr. G. Locker
Lampson, M.P., who, as Vice-Chairman of the Committee,
has shown so much zeal and assiduity in connection
with this important work.